RWBY is Garbage and Here's Why
by Shake N. Bake Mormon
Summary: Inspired by "Steven Universe is Garbage and Here's Why." From the perspective of someone introduced to the show by Death Battle.


RWBY was my first fandom.

Sure, I'd been a fan of things before: TF2, Doctor Who, Pokemon was on and off, Marvel, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars, and Halo, but RWBY was what brought me onto Reddit in the first place, as well as Fanfiction. Yes, RWBY was the first series I ever wrote a true fanfic of, and a little over four years later, I'm heading up to University as a Film major to learn how to write for television.

Like many people, I was first exposed to RWBY via the Tifa Death Battle. The first new episode upon my becoming a fan was "Never Miss A Beat," with a fun action scene and the best rendition of "I Burn" in the entire series, at the time and ever since. In retrospect, I don't know exactly what it was that brought me to RWBY, but realizing that this is my fourteen-year-old self we're talking about, the action scenes probably more than did the trick.

I'd rather not talk about the aforementioned fanfics in any detail, but I'm mentioning them here to give you an idea of what this show was to me. Until RWBY, I'd just enjoyed things. Now, I was actually creating things inspired by it, talking with other people about potential theories about the show's future, and, regrettably, RPing. I moved past that last one within a year, and haven't touched RP in any real capacity since, but that's something RWBY had me doing that nothing else had.

But that was 14-year-old me, in a time where the concept of the maidens had just been introduced to the audience. That perspective is far different from the one I hold now, going on nineteen with the seventh volume coming to a close. I though RWBY was a great series before, but now?

RWBY is Garbage, and Here's Why.

**AS SUBTLE AS A SCYTHE TO THE FACE**

When talking about RWBY, the first subject that's bound to come up is its fight scenes. It IS an action series, after all. Made by the creator of "Dead Fantasy," which, for the record, I haven't seen, fans in 2013 were left salivating for more after the release of the Red Trailer, which has nearly 15 million views on YouTube at time of writing. Ironically, however, the action is what I have the least to say about, because to me, it's become mundane. It's almost paradoxical: because of how much spectacle is packed into the fights, and because of how many blows are exchanged with very little or no meaning, the fight scenes, the main draw of the series, lose their tension. RWBY is unique in this predicament from what I can tell: the fights in The Clone Wars are numerous and pretty flashy, but the tension hasn't disappeared from them the way it did for RWBY, even knowing that a majority of these characters are incapable of dying in this series. The tournament arc likely didn't help: the breaking of someone's aura became a sport, and until someone's aura is gone, no harm will befall them. If aura were consistent, this would be less of a problem: audiences could keep track of a character's aura to get an idea of how much danger a character is in. Unfortunately, the writers decide how resilient a character is in any particular scene on a whim, so while Weiss can occasionally survive being thrown into a concrete pillar several times her size with no visible aura loss, she can sometimes have her aura depleted by the first successful hit against her. All this failing to mention that the choreography has some serious 'what in the sam hill' moments: the Battle of Haven is absolutely full of such moments, from the angle of Jaune's first attacking changing between cuts, to Cinder blocking said attack at a VERY awkward angle, to Ruby spinning her scythe like it has no weight whatsoever, to the Raven v. Cinder fight, to Qrow v. Lionheart, and that's just in the span of four episodes. The animation definitely faltered after Monty's untimely death, though, with no disrespect to the dead, I must say that RWBY's always had problems inherent to its choreography, in that almost no attacks have weight. I mean, have you ever fired a shotgun? Try firing a shotgun at the end of a chain and still using it viably as a set of nunchucks. I know that not all fights have to be realistic, Pokemon being one of the best examples of this, but the borderline lack of physics and weight to any particular attack makes the fights hard to commend.

There's not a whole lot to talk about with non-fight animations: as I've said in previous posts, animation doesn't matter. However, what does matter is giving a crap, something this show absolutely refuses to do. I've previously posted pictures of some of RWBY's recent storyboards, but for those of you who haven't seen them, they are incredibly haphazard, one-line drawings which didn't get past step 4 of drawing a person, so unrecognizable that they have to be color-coded lest the animators be unaware of who they're supposed to be animating. There aren't even any faces, which is why the animators have to put a 'determined' face on their characters a lot of the time: the storyboard artists aren't telling them anything different. I have to stress that this is HIGHLY unusual: despite storyboards being purely technical, their quality varies, but in pretty much any case, the characters will AT LEAST be drawn with faces and more than a mere wireframe body. Even STEVEN UNIVERSE has cleaner and more professional storyboards, and that's a show with 'lazy' and 'unprofessional' in the elevator pitch. Compared to Clone Wars and Avatar, which both include faces, and Code Lyoko, whose storyboards are pretty much background-free monochrome versions of the finished product, RWBY's storyboards are not flattering, and it seems to affect the final product, given all the teleportation that appears to happen in fight scenes and elsewhere.

**I BURN (YOUR EARDRUMS)**

Oh, boy, here's ShakeNBakeMormon talking about RWBY's music again!

Not all of RWBY's tracks are bad. The first verse of "I Burn" is alright, "Time to Say Goodbye" is solid, "Boop," while not technically counting due to not actually being in the show, is decent, and "Jaune and the Ursa" is actually really good, and should be used WAY more often. So, what's the problem? Pretty much all of the lyrical tracks in the show. The problem reared its massive, ugly head in the V6 finale most of all, where both of the major fights- BY vs. Adam and QRAP+ vs. Cordo's Mech- had ear-grating songs with confusing lyrics with no real emotional impact. I skipped through most of the mech fight on first viewing just because I couldn't stand "Big Metal Shoe," the lyrics of which I couldn't comprehend when listening to it, or even when viewing them on a screen. The lyrics are dumb, their delivery caused me physical pain… it was "Caffeine" all over again, and it's something this show's dealt with since the "Black" trailer, which might explain why that trailer is the least-viewed of the four. Halo's music might not be the most fitting choice for a lot of scenes either, but I could imagine most themes from Marvel: Ultimate Alliance finding a place in RWBY. That, or they could just reuse "Jaune and the Ursa" every chance they get. That works too. Just take out the lyrics, please, they're never the best part of any song and they usually drag the series down. Heck, the best rendition of "I Burn" is the jazz one, without lyrics. It's not that lyrics are automatically bad: "Cara Mia Addio" from Portal 2, "Everything's Alright" from To The Moon, and "Vale Decem" from Doctor Who have some words for you if you think that. It's just that RWBY doesn't know what it's doing when it comes to lyrics, their delivery or writing. This shows most in the OPs, which, aside from running WAY too long with two exceptions, are just chores to listen to due to their having the consistency of Comcast. One second it's one tune, and then it just jumps to Casey screaming. Not singing, screaming. There's a reason mumble rap and heavy metal are crap genres in the singing department, and Casey demonstrates exactly why in the Volume 3-6 themes. Volume 7, she does get better about this, though not by much, but it shares a problem with the other odd-numbered volumes plus V4 and V6 (so, I guess all but V2 and WoR) in that the lyrics are dumb. Seriously, 'trust love?' That's a stupid concept, forget lyrics. Minimize the lyrics, and you maximize the show's music quality from what I've seen. Heck, metal and jazz are fine when they don't have lyrics to ruin them. Get a better singer if you do have some lyrical tracks: Ellen McLain, Laura Shigihara, Mark Chambers, anyone capable of singing emotional tracks. I don't want to accuse CRWBY of nepotism in their decision to hire Casey as a singer, but from my experience listening to the tracks, I can't imagine how else she would've gotten the job. Casey's a chore to listen to, and it doesn't help that she's got crap material.

**STARTING OFF STRONG**

Let's start from the first episode of the series: we see Ruby, the girl from the trailer, revisiting the gravestone from said trailer, and she talks to it as a child might to their deceased loved ones. She talks about the other main characters, her teammates, and we get the sense of camaraderie she feels with them, and while it's very much on the side of 'tell' rather than 'show,' it gets away with it because it feels natural. It also introduces Ruby as perhaps a more innocent character, as many more 'mature' individuals would be less inclined to talk to the grave like this. As this scene ends, we're thrust straight into the action with a tournament, the rules of which are explained to the in-universe audience as shorthand to explain it to the real-world audience. We get our first glimpse at the kind of action RWBY has, showing the teamwork of team RWBY in a controlled environment. The characters seem to have health bars, which can be inferred to be a measurement of Aura, from our understanding of it from the World of Remnant episode. The fight's fun enough, and a good demonstration of some of the main cast's abilities. After the fight, we're treated to some light-hearted comedy, and meet four additional characters plus two villains. Nora's character is excellently displayed, as are Ren's, Pyrrha's, and Jaune's. Blake and Weiss are both characterized well with the comedy at the noodle stand, demonstrating Blake's appreciation for fish and showing Weiss to be from a wealthy family, though seemingly at odds with them. Yang is already appearing to be a brawler, and her participation in the next round confirms it. The series premiere ends with the start of another fight, further going to show that this is first and foremost an action series. For a series that's gone so far downhill, "Round One" is actually a GREAT pilot episode.

…

Okay, I'm not stupid. I know there's two entire volumes before this episode. But guess what? You don't NEED those twenty-eight- count them, twenty-eight- episodes before the V3 premiere, because it functions just fine as a series premiere. It's a perfectly functional in medias res opening, and honestly, you could take Salem and Ozpin's monologue from the true premiere and slap it onto the start of this episode, panning down to Ruby at Summer's grave. Perfect opening right there. You can accept the main four as a combat team without having to see how they became a team, and you can accept that they're close because they show it in the fight after Ruby's told us about it. Give V3 the OP of V2 and you've got everyone and their mother salivating for more. Release the World of Remnant episodes before starting V3, and V1+V2 are unneeded. That's right: over 30% of the series so far is not even needed. Ladies and gentlemen, _how on earth did this happen? _

It takes over thirty episodes to kick the story into gear. This would be fine if the maidens were interesting, and were consistently a major part of the sto- OOOOH, what are "Relics?!" They sound shiny! I'm ninety-eight percent sure the only reason the maidens were required to open the relic vaults is the out-of-universe reason of needing the maidens to remain relevant in any capacity. RWBY can't focus: if there's one problem EVERYONE has had with this series, it's that it seems to change direction on a whim. "Well, there were four human/faunus McGuffins that were important, but we'll just use them for even flashier fight scenes and focus on a lamp, axe, spear, and sword instead." RWBY would have been off to a good start, if the start had been "Round One," but has since chased after so many 'shiny' things that it's suffered for.

**ONLY ONE LANGUAGE EXISTS, AND THE CHARACTERS STILL HAVE TROUBLE SPEAKING IT**

I'm a dialogue guy. Anyone who's read anything I've written will tell you that. Somehow, even with Asperger's, I seem to have a knack for writing conversations and monologues. And that skill comes in handy when I'm analyzing shows, where I can tell bad dialogue from a mile away. "There is no beating Salem" comes to mind, as does pretty much every single line by Raven in V5. Characters say things… awkwardly, and in ways most people, especially in their situation, wouldn't. It's like Riverdale, but even less excusable because the main protagonist is supposed to have a 10 in Charisma. Raven's a poet next to half the dialogue in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but that game gets away with a lot more because it takes itself completely seriously, which makes it incredibly charming. RWBY doesn't seem to have the same level of charm to it. So, while RWBY has better dialogue on paper than the likes of MUA's "I'm workin' with the biggest group of villains this world has ever known… the Masters of Evil. ~ That's the best part of all. We're led by the man himself- Dr. Doom!", it's nowhere near as capable of getting away with it, because its charm simply doesn't match MUA. Of course, it might also help that that game's soundtrack stubbornly refuses to disappoint me. If RWBY can't mimic the charm of comic-book style dialogue, it should avoid anything that sounds like it's from a rough draft of a Riverdale episode.

**THE BIRDS AND THE BEES**

You all knew this was coming.

So, how would a practicing Mormon go about fixing the show's main LGBT ship? Two potential answers: first possible answer, establish it from the start.

If you start from V1C1, establish Blake as Yang's girlfriend in her first or second appearance, probably in the ballroom. If you start from V3, establish Blake as Yang's girlfriend in the first non-combat scene. Start the relationship in medias res. Every single moment between them is made more impactful by their being a couple: if you include V1 with Yang and Blake starting the series as a couple, you can pour gas on the Weiss and Blake melodrama "Captain America: Civil War" style by revealing that Yang knew about Blake's past with the White Fang, and having her talk Weiss down in order to more organically conclude that mini-arc. Yang later helps her girlfriend take a step back and avoid overworking herself by convincing her to go to a dance, and the Fall of Beacon splits the lovers apart, with V6 showing the two falling in love again, Yang finally truly forgiving Blake in the Adam fight. So, you make an LGBT couple years before same-sex marriage is legalized in the U.S., and them being a couple improves so many story beats, so you have an in-universe and out-of-universe reason to do this.

That or just kill Blake off in the Adam fight so we don't have to worry about any of this. Besides Bumbleby, Blake has pretty much no purpose in the story now: the White Fang is gone, her fight over. Don't mix these two solutions, because then the FNDM'll call you out on the 'bury your gays' trope. Pick one or the other, but either works.

**CONCLUSION**

Abandon hope for this series. It's too far gone, and honestly, it's become a good example of how not to write. Maybe it'll get better someday, but I doubt it. And that makes me sad, for all the reasons I stated at the start of this essay. I would have had absolutely zero career prospects if I hadn't discovered my knack and love for writing thanks to this series. For that, it'll always hold a place in my heart, but unfortunately, I won't remember it as one of the greats.


End file.
